


Of Passageways and Pursuit

by thisiszircon



Series: The Moment of Awakening [1]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: F/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:17:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisiszircon/pseuds/thisiszircon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor and Ace are pursued by a monster, with some disconcerting repercussions.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Passageways and Pursuit

**Author's Note:**

> With grateful thanks to my invaluable beta-reader and editor, [Nemo the Everbeing](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemo_the_Everbeing).
> 
> ~~~
> 
> "When we dream that we are dreaming, the moment of awakening is at hand."
> 
> In the Heart of the Country  
> J.M.Coetzee

An endless passageway: wide, straight, featureless.

The sounds of pursuit.  An angry mob or a stomping security detail or a lumbering monster.

(One of those.  Probably.  The details were admittedly sketchy.)

Ace was running, and the Doctor was running beside her.  They weren't touching.  Holding hands wasn't practical when you were running for your life; you couldn't get any arm movement going.  Ace just knew the Doctor was alongside her, knew without turning her head to look, knew without listening to the sound of their footsteps.  She knew, because when they ran down endless passageways pursued by terrible somethings it was always together.

As she ran, Ace wondered why her chest wasn't burning with exertion.  How long had this dash from danger lasted?  She couldn't remember.

That was weird.

Also weird was the gravity in the passageway.  One moment she felt all but weightless and could cover metres with a single athletic bound, the next moment she felt like she was forcing her way through air that threatened to solidify and trap her, like an insect in amber.

But even that wasn't quite so weird as the inexplicable urge she had to giggle.  They were being chased, and Ace had the distinct impression that their pursuer was gaining on them, and it was unlikely that the chase would end with their pursuer shouting "Tag!  You're it!" and then pelting off back the way they'd come.  More likely there'd be dungeons, or the business end of weapons.  Maybe this would turn out to be the time when their luck finally ran out, and the weapons were fired before the Doctor had his chance to say or do something clever.

So what, exactly, was so funny?

Ace wondered whether this passageway was actually, literally endless, perhaps in some kind of Moebius strip configuration, because it stretched ahead as far as she could see, no doors, no turns, no junctions-

"In here!" the Doctor barked, and her arm was grabbed.  Her forward momentum made her spin around him like a slingshot, and she had to lift her free arm to keep from slamming nose-first into the wall of the passageway.  When she'd recovered her balance, she looked around.

In where?  There was nowhere to go except straight ahead.  She'd just established that-

Oh.

Into the storeroom which had materialised out of nowhere.

Ace allowed herself to be pulled inside.  The door slid shut behind them with a hiss, because that's what doors in endless passageways did.  Ace caught her breath, trying to keep as quiet as possible.  She was confused.  Hadn't those in pursuit seen them come in here?  They had clear line-of-sight down the almost-endless passageway.

She listened.  She heard nothing.

"We need to hide," said the Doctor.

She frowned and looked around.  Hiding places would be thin on the ground.  This was just your bog-standard storeroom, with ladder-rack shelves around the walls, all institutional grey, and-

Oh.

Of course there was always the bright orange two-man tent pitched in the middle of the room.

The Doctor had already approached it and was unzipping the entry flap.  Ace had to suppress another giggle because 'flap' was a funny word.  Then she shrugged and followed the Doctor inside, crawling on hands and knees.

"Get the light," he told her, zipping them up securely.  "Or they'll see our shadows."

She looked about and found a wall switch.  Weird, for a tent, but a pitched tent was weird for a storeroom and two weirds made a normal, like multiplying negatives.  Ace flicked the switch and they were plunged into darkness, just as the storeroom door slid open with another hiss.

She held her breath.  The Doctor did the same.  They both lay on their stomachs, side by side, on what felt like those slightly cushioned bedrolls they gave you at Girl Guide camp that were supposed to be softer than the ground but weren't.  Much.

"Did I ever tell you I got chucked out of the Guides?" Ace asked.

"Shh!" the Doctor reminded her.

There came the thudding sound of slow footsteps.  The footsteps drew closer.  Ace felt danger and tension and fear and she pressed closer to her friend.  The Doctor wrapped an arm over her shoulders.  They both listened intently.  The footsteps were enhanced by the sound of breathing, wet and laboured, like Darth Vader having an asthma attack.

"Sixty-a-day monster," Ace whispered, delivering the comment into the Doctor's ear.

His shoulders twitched as he held in a chuckle, though he shushed her again.  By this time the faint light from the endless passageway was permeating the darkness.  Ace could just make out the shape of the Doctor's head.  She smiled as her lips brushed against his hair.  Slathering monsters aside, this was a pleasant place to be.

"Nice cuddle," she whispered, again into the Doctor's ear.

He moved this time, placing his mouth to her own ear, and his "Shhhh!" was drawn out and sensual.  Ace shivered under his breath.  "Are you cold?" the Doctor added.  She would have denied it, but his arm pulled her closer and his body edged over her as though they needed to share body heat.  In this tent.  In a storeroom.  Just off a straight and featureless passageway.

Outside, the monster-sounds revealed it was moving away.  It seemed to potter over to a shelf.  There was the noise of something fumbling about, scattering stored items.  A few boxes tumbled to the floor.

"Maybe it wasn't following us," Ace suggested.  "Maybe the printer just ran out of paper."

With the Doctor now half-lying on top of her, she felt the way his abdomen heaved with humour.  "Stop that!" he said under his breath.

"What?"

"Making me laugh.  It'll hear."

As if reacting to the sound of their whispers, the footsteps came close again.  They both tensed.  This time the monster's shadow fell across the canvas.  An unwieldy but vicious-looking set of claws struck a threatening pose.  Monster finger-puppetry.

"It'll never manage the zip," Ace observed.

Accompanied by a roar, a monstrous foot stamped down on the tent, pressing the fabric into the floor just where Ace's left elbow had been.  She'd have had a broken bone at the least, had it not been for the way the Doctor rolled her back with him in the nick of time.  The tent's frame bent but didn't topple.  She remembered danger.  Why was she being so flippant?

And why was her body wriggling like this, spooned against the Time Lord?

And...why was he wriggling back?

The intruding monster-foot was withdrawn.  The tent snapped back into shape.  The Doctor celebrated by reaching to cup her breast.  Ace gasped.

"Is that nice?" he murmured.

Ace considered the question and answered honestly.  "Yes.  Very nice."

"Good."  Outside the tent the monster growled frustration and then departed through the sliding door.  Hiss.  Darkness.  "Good job it was a monster-proof tent."

"Good job," Ace agreed and moved his hand lower, so she could encourage it to slip under her T-shirt.  "Professor..."

His hips pressed forwards.  "Is this what you want?" he whispered in her ear.

"More than anything."

"Then blink your clothes off," he instructed.

Ace blinked hard, and wasn't surprised when her clothes dissipated into nothing.  The Doctor's fingers stroked and tugged.  She ground herself into him.

"Now you," she said hoarsely.

He hummed agreement, suddenly naked against her, and their bodies slid and found alignment, and his mouth was at her neck, and his hands...god!  His hands were-

~~~

Ace awoke with a start.

(Hands?)

She gasped for air as she flailed for some purchase on her current reality.  What the hell had just happened?  A little suspiciously she reached with her senses: the TARDIS thrummed, the air smelled right, and when she dug the nail of her thumb into her fingertip it hurt.

Okay, so she was awake.  Not dream-awake, proper-awake, and there were no more monsters and no inexplicable tents and no naked Time Lords.

A dream.  Just a dream.

Her stomach was fluttering with butterflies.  She told herself there was nothing to worry about.  This wasn't the first naughty dream she'd ever had, and it wouldn't be the last.  No need to freak out.  Not even when the dream-lover touching her breasts had been-

Ace shook the mental images away.  All else besides, she was in a craft which boasted telepathic circuits and she shared it with an alien whose mental powers were far greater than her own.  In the TARDIS, Ace was never quite sure how far her privacy extended.  Naked nuzzling Time Lords was not something she wanted to be caught thinking about.

In the quiet of her quarters she listened to her breathing settle down.  The thin trace of sweat over her upper lip felt cool against the air.  Her heart thumped in her ears, its rhythm gradually easing.  Deliberately, she ignored the clamouring tension in her body.

What a dream.  Vivid, and bonkers, and with a genuine sting in its tail.

And now she'd regained some composure, Ace began to analyse.  The details of the dream were fading with consciousness: something about danger and hiding and inappropriate jokes, before her libido had decided to hijack the damned thing.  She wasn't sure how to feel about this nocturnal visitation.  Did she need to feel anything at all?  So, she'd dreamed about the Professor, and in a way that was unexpected.  And uncomfortable.  And, frankly, incomprehensible, because she was pretty sure she did _not_ see him like that.  At all.  So part of her - the part that was still teenaged, if technically adult - wanted to go 'Eww!' like a kid watching a screen kiss.

Another part of her was already admonishing that dreams were just dreams, and the whole interpretation business was better suited to hack pop-psychology than sensible analysis.  People wrote books on the meaning of dreams.  Ace didn't believe a word.  (Or wouldn't, if she ever read any of them.)  Point was, if she'd really wanted to dream about the Professor, she'd have ended up dreaming about fire engines or squirrels or abseiling or something.

Of course, there was a small part of herself that was whispering, 'Yes, but what if...?'  It was being cheered on by her libido, still urging abandonment if only for a few solitary and empty seconds.  She continued to ignore the urge.

The thoughts wouldn't calm, even as her body reluctantly relaxed.  She couldn't drift back off to sleep, so she pushed herself out of bed and padded across the room to her bathroom, where she splashed cold water on her face.  The mundane activity soothed.  Ace gave herself a talking to.  Her subconscious mind had put a few random pieces together; that was all that had happened.  Things like her recent nineteenth birthday, and her maturing relationship with the Professor.  The fact that he was the one constant man in her life.  The way they regularly shared the thrill and terror of dangerous situations.

In fact, that was it.  There was a sexiness to danger.  It had nothing to do with fancying the Doctor.  He'd provided the hands and the mouth in her dream because he was familiar to her, but it could have been anybody.  This was reinforced by the way she hadn't been looking at his face when things started to get intimate.  No face, no personal connection, no need to worry about the owner of the hands and mouth.

Just a run of the mill 'I haven't had sex in far too long' dream.  No big deal.

Ace sighed and went back to bed.  As she closed her eyes she thought determinedly about Dalek innards.  They were about the least sexy thing she could imagine.

~~~~~~


End file.
